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10 Dec 2016 1:51:41am

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Phillip's conservatism is radically at odds with the Right in Australia, and in the UK. It would devolve power away from the state to communities and familiesm whereas the Right has overseen the shrinkage of community and the unrelenting growth of bureaucracy. It would protect and strengthen mutuals and social enterprises, instead of strangling them through inappropriate regulation as the Right has done in Australia. It would transfer resources and power to families in areas like disability, education, and community services, instead of the provider-centred focus that the Right share with the Left in these areas. It would develop community provision of health care, along the lines of our old friendly society tradition, before the Right and Left jointly destroyed these mutual organisations. It would restrict concentrations of ownership in areas like retail, transport, airlines, telecommunications, where the Right has buttressed duopolies for generations. The Right has lost itself in a managerialism that is indistinguishable from that of the Left.

A key insight in Phillip's work is that individualism and statism are flip sides of the same coin. In embracing a managerial view of the world, the Right has lost any interest in society and social relationships, and with a dwindling of society you get a growth of big government and bureaucracy. The Right in Australia is as much responsibile for the growth of big government and passive welfare, as the Left.